 Welcome, everyone. I'm Amal Ondraus, I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. I'm very excited to be speaking with you today to share with you what we're doing at the school. It's a really both challenging time, but also incredibly exciting in terms of the thinking and the transformations and the sort of really pushing the disciplines and the practices of the built environment. So today I will take you through very broadly the themes and the kind of work and the student life that happens at the school that is happening now that happened in the past, and I'm hopeful will happen again next year with many of you with us. And so I'll be sharing our presentation so that you can get a glimpse into the school, even though you're not with us physically this fall. This is Avery Hall. I think that as architects and planners and preservationists and critics and curators and urban designers and real estate developers and we really kind of are attached to our building. It's a very iconic McKim, Mead and White building, and a lot of it is about bringing all of these disciplines together on a beautiful campus, the Columbia University campus in the heart of New York City. And so the sense of kind of different people coming together from around the world in this incredible neighborhood is really kind of embodied by both the old and the new which this building in its context represents. The school is very much about what I call the scales of engagement how we engage with the issues of our time. Through the different disciplines at different scales in the scale of preservation is the scale of the material it's the scale of sort of a kind of much more sort of precise scale in terms of technology and social engagement, the scale of architecture, the scale of building, the scale of urban design and planning is much more at the urban and regional scale etc. and how all these systems come together is what we try to kind of look at at the school. And of course these lines of inquiry are infinite and our students take them in so many different directions but I would say that the three main themes that I think run through all of the programs is the focus on climate climate change and what we can do today to address climate through the built environment questions of equity, social and racial equity, very visible through the built environment as we saw and then we continue to see with the covert crisis, the intersection of health of issues of social economic access, all of these things are embedded with what we design and how we design and data and design we understand the technology, as I'm speaking to you today is shaping everything. It's reshaping space, it's drawing, making connections between people but also creating barriers and so how we undo these barriers and emphasize the connections through data and design in the built environment is very crucial to all of our programs. On the issue of climate, if you go to our website you can see on you know both all three themes you can see extensive work that's been done over the years and that continues to be done as I said across the program whether it's historic preservation and thinking about the future of many of our iconic cities that are under distress, whether it's real estate development very engaged in shaping the future of the built environment and bringing issues of social equity, racial equity and climate resilience adaptability and, and the idea of private and public development coming together. Urban design is very much dedicated to climate change and I know many of you will hear from the director Kate Orff and this has been a running running thread, because the program is really embedded in this kind of systems infrastructural thinking water systems and other that are central to to the to the program and finally architecture as well whether it says kind of very large scale understanding of issues of migration and how it is impacting cities and and and intersecting with climate change. And, as well, I think what's great about having these running themes is that programs come together and we have a lot of dual degree students and at the intersection of preservation or planning at the intersection of planning and architecture, or preservation and architecture real estate and architecture, etc. These themes are really organizing much of the of the research. So I showed a lot of sort of images about the kind of large scale intervention but we're also looking at the material scale questions of embodied energy this is David Benjamin's research for the new museum of modern art really literally seeing the calculating and making visible the embodied energy of constructing that project. And so this kind of research and thinking extends through the work of our students. Very creative very experimental ways you know at what at what scale do you decide that you want to impact the environment is it at the scale of the body is it at the scale of systems at the scale of buildings etc at every scale these ideas are existing and and lasted. And get tied very much to the research centers that we have at the school the Center for resilient cities and landscapes. The Buell Center or the Center for spatial research amongst many other. So here I'm showing just work of the students. This is advanced studio under under is hockey. This is last year we had the public works for a Green New Deal collaborating across many studios to look at the question of the public of the Green New Deal, working with the Buell Center and collaboration with the school. So it's kind of coming all together and bringing the labs as well such as Malo Hudson Circular Cities workshop that he did with his health and equity lab. And the student transform all these ideas in a very creative way, kind of creating a sense of both continuity and change as we rethink both history but also imagine a different future. The question of equity, as I mentioned is also very central to all of our programs and how we think about equity, how we think about social justice and racial justice in the built environment is increasingly, I think, central to to the school. Of course, a program such as urban planning is really sort of embedded in issues of social justice and that has expanded out to all of the program, especially as I mentioned with the COVID crisis looking at the connections between social racial justice and the built environment. And kind of using our tools as architects and planners to make those relationships visible through mapping through kind of questioning preservation and how preservation approaches and these issues of social justice through critical curatorial practices and making visible the kind of segregation and discriminatory practice practices that exist in our, in, you know, in the ways that we work, and also kind of being sort of enlisting new modes of representation, undoing the typical ways that we think about architecture bringing performance and to kind of undo these, these boundaries, this was a fantastic presentation by Mario Gooden last year at the school and continuing with issues of representation, you know, questioning ideas about typologies that are not specifically Western such as the mosque and the ways they've been represented throughout typically in architectural education so really questioning the boundaries of the discipline through kind of opening up what is represented who is represented how is it represented and how we can undo some of these ideas. The issue of equity is also central to the project of housing, which is in itself central to the school we have unbelievable expertise amongst our faculty who have looked at the history of housing both in the United States and elsewhere. We've launched two years ago the housing lab that is very much kind of student run and is kind of coming up with new ideas to intervene in public housing and is engaging now the alumni network etc to really bring expand on the work of housing at the school and connect our students to what is happening outside of the school. And we also have amazing faculty that are really practicing what we teach in terms of addressing affordable housing and new modes of housing, modular housing, etc, whether it's in Barcelona or in Johannesburg in Mexico City or in New York City. So this kind of incredible expertise is really something that is central to the school and the housing cuts across all of the programs and is certainly central to the MR program in terms of the seminal housing studio which is the third semester studio which has in the past often traveled either in the US or elsewhere to think relationally and compare context and places and understand what is, you know, what are kind of normalized ideas about density or how we live and question those or how we build. So these kind of relational thinking and thinking about housing not just in a European or American setting but across different cities across different neighborhoods within those cities really kind of brings a new perspective to how we think of housing for the future. And finally, as I mentioned, data and design, I think the school is really leading in terms of new representational technologies, drawing technologies, this is still part of its history in terms of the kind of ideas of the paperless studio and right now obviously we're definitely paperless but more than that I think it's not just about drawing or how we draw but what we draw and what are the new relationships that we make visible to understand the built environment and new ways to allow us to act on it as architects as planners as developers as preservationists and find ways to intervene. And this is the work of the Center for Spatial Research led by Laura Kergan and this, this is of course, tying not, you know, moving beyond what is virtual and what is analog what is physical and what is digital and coming together to make things and tie the two together and bring the two, the kind of physical and the digital together to again make visible and you know how our built environment operates now. And how we can intervene more precisely within what is not always visible. And the visual studies sequence in particular, for example, in the architecture programs is incredibly rich in different perspectives and now it's really cutting across to planning etc to bring these tools and this understanding. And across all of the programs we have just launched the summer the GSAP skill trails which is open to all of you you can access it's about making available and accessible publicly, sort of tools and knowledge about scripting and new kinds of software etc and you can, you can access it. And this is some of the work that I wanted to show from our students from the spring, which is how we take the tools that we have, but then move much further and reinventing them to come together and create a sense of community and collective collectivity we have also in terms of the technology sequence in architecture, our new full time professor Lola Ben-Alon is doing incredible work on eco friendly materials embodied energy and working closely both with the preservation program and planning, you know to bring all of these things together reshaping. As I said, notions of energy climate through data and design and technology together. And this is some of the work for example of the building technology sequence of historic preservation where technology is just incredible right now to understand buildings. This is the playfulness and sense of openness we engage with as reviews are, you know, happening and whether they are remote or in person. And, and just kind of again bringing all these ideas of climate equity and and data and design to make it make all of these relationships visible for us to intervene in new ways, both digitally and in the in the in the city itself. This is just some images of our making studio and what I love about our making studio and making at the school is that it's very much collaborative and increasingly more and more programs are engaging with, you know, the kind of empowerment that you get from making and feeling like you can transform the built environment and experiment in both a playful and responsible way. So all of these ideas that kind of we put forth are really for you as students to take positions to define your position in architecture and in planning and real estate and preservation and to empower you to kind of find ways to act in the world towards a more creative and more sustainable and more equitable future when it comes to the cities and the built environment around this. It's a very, I think I think of the school as a really a place where people discuss issues and come together and debate them. There's a sense of openness and if you would like you can still see all of the work at the end of your show that is still posted. It was the first end of your show that went completely digital in the spring and it just was an incredible way to kind of cut across all of the programs and see the work of the students as they assembled their ideas after three semesters, two years, three years into portfolios into thesis and into really kind of positions and so some of the work that I'm sharing here cuts across architecture, urban design, CCCP in terms of the kind of thesis or thesis in urban planning and all of this is kind of visible for you to see and I think it speaks for itself in terms of the incredible quality and of thinking of making of imagination that the students put forth at the end of their time with us. And this time is fun, it's energizing, it's empowering, it's and even in this moment of kind of remote learning, there's a lot of experimentation and how we are kind of connecting who is there and who is, I mean, everybody's there, but who is physically together and who is, who is not. And I do believe that while I'm very hopeful the next fall we will be together again all together. I think a lot of the experiments that are occurring now in terms of connecting globally different people around the world or cutting down on travel I think some of these ideas will stay there to enrich the experience and we certainly have retrofitted the entire school to be able to do that and I think that will definitely, maybe this will not stay social distancing I hope the physical distancing but but certainly the kind of work we've done with the technology will sort of enable the sense of connection and we will continue to feel very connected to the city we are in, which is New York and you know it's just a incredible laboratory of ideas of people of experiments over time historically in the present some which are great some which we need to learn from to do in a different way and so New York is really part part of the school itself and and one of the reasons why I think so many people are attracted to coming to faculty or students and this is just kind of sharing with you what's happening right now I know some of you will attend the midterm reviews which I meant very much encourage you to attend and we've created these virtual studios and a way for students to connect right now and I'm really looking forward for you to connect with our own students are events and public events and programming and and exhibitions are very much always capturing and advancing ideas about the disciplines this semester we are completely dedicated to the question of unlearning whiteness and the question of racial equity in the built environment incredible perspectives coming together to find ways to engage these issues in a in a really creative way with a broad range of architects and designers and planners from from around the world and moving you know the discipline for through publication and these are some of the upcoming books and both you know cutting through design cutting through theory cutting through scholarship and and here you can see a little bit how we continue to create a sense of community through our communication at this time and communicating through events etc and so I think a lot of what is being done now will stay in terms of overlapping the digital and the physical and enhancing the experience of being together both in the buildings but also virtually as well these are some of our spaces which you would have been able to visit had you been able to come we try to take over all of our spaces for student work for exhibition this is the Ross gallery we've had fantastic exhibition such as that of cooking sections or to request a Dyson who produced sort of original work on called 1919 black water and you can see on the website more information about it and we really also have a great student culture in terms of our student group student engagement and thinking about practice for the future how we construct new forms of practice to engage what are different career trajectories and how the school can support both these ideas and and more tangibly what happens after students students graduate great student very active student groups the black student alliance at GSAP has been extraordinary and pushing the school over the past month and and then at this simultaneously again the idea of when you're at the school you're already connected with the city and there's so many offices and practices around that we we make that connection we have offices being visited we have conferences that are happening outside of the school itself we collaborate with institutions with such as MoMA or the Queens Museum or the storefront for art and architecture or of course the AI in New York etc. MoMA and others to really kind of build those institutional bridges and allow for the students while they're at school and afterwards to be part of changing the culture of architecture these are our new presidents co-presidents for the alumni board and we've been increasing the ties amongst the alumni and between the students and the and the alumni all summer and continuing this semester there are conversations between alumni and current students again to to think about you know what what what what do students what is available when you graduate and how do you continue to dive into the issues that are interesting to you while you're at school another motive support has been and continues to be the GSAP incubator which is now at price that enables recent graduates to really explore questions of practice in new ways and push the boundaries and again you can look online for some of these podcasts and conversations to see what some of our incubator alumni have done over the past years hopefully when we're back all together we'll still be able not just to explore virtually but to kind of engage experientially and continue to learn from different places and contexts and sites and be there to understand how we can be better citizens of the planet and how do we live together in in a kind of more sustainable equitable and creative way so that's it for today as the open house and I know you will hear more from the various program directors it's a very exciting energized and sort of empowering moment at the school and there's many many questions that I think the built environment and architecture are central to and we are really shaping the next generation of sort of engaged practitioners thank you everyone and hope to see you soon